Archives for White House

By deadlocking on President Barack Obama’s immigration program, the Supreme Court not only scuttled a policy the White House hoped would be a cornerstone of the president’s legacy — it added another chapter to Obama’s turbulent history with the court and delivered a reminder that there’s more to come. In Obama’s final seven months in office, the federal courts will weigh in on several key pieces of his remaining agenda — including environmental regulations. The court has twice saved Obama’s signature health care law from becoming his signature failure. The president has heralded the court’s decision on gay marriage, andRead More

After learning the Supreme Court deadlocked on an immigration plan that would protect her from being deported, Marta Gualotuna could barely speak through her tears. “This decision is very, very painful for me,” Gualotuna, 57, said in Spanish through a translator. The Ecuadorian immigrant had hoped the court would uphold President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive order, which was designed to reduce the threat of deportation for certain immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Despite her sadness, Gualotuna, a New York City resident who’s been in the country for more than 20 years and has three American-born children, was also determined.Read More

Embracing grieving Orlando families and appealing anew for national action, President Barack Obama claimed a threat to all Americans’ security Thursday as a strong reason to tighten U.S. gun laws. Counterterror campaigns overseas, he declared, can never prevent all “lone wolf” attacks like the one that killed 49 people in Orlando. Speaking at a makeshift memorial to the victims, Obama said the massacre at a gay nightclub was evidence that “different steps” are needed to limit the damage a “deranged” person set on committing violence can do. He cheered on Democrats’ push for new gun control measures, including a newRead More

On a grim and delicate mission, President Barack Obama will offer solace and healing to a distraught Orlando, even as the political world turns the shooting into a fresh excuse to fight about terrorism and gun control. In Orlando, Obama will confront an event whose causes seem to grow murkier by the day. Even as the families of 49 victims prepare to bury their loved ones, it’s still unclear what confluence of factors led a 29-year-old Muslim born in New York to open fire in a gay nightclub where he may have been a frequent patron. Typically, when the presidentRead More

President Barack Obama is angrily denouncing Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, blasting the views of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as a threat to American security and a menacing echo of some of the most shameful moments in U.S. history. Obama’s rebuke Tuesday was his most searing yet of the man seeking to take his seat in the Oval Office. While the president has frequently dismissed Trump as a buffoon or a huckster, this time he challenged the former reality television star as a “dangerous” threat to the nation’s safety, religious freedom and diversity. “That’s not the America we want. ItRead More

Was it homegrown terrorism, bigotry or random gun violence? Americans searching for answers after the Orlando shootings are finding no easy solutions from President Barack Obama, who is conceding that a deadly mix of extremism and easy gun access have made future tragedies almost a foregone conclusion. In the days after the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, Obama has offered no simple prescriptions or promises for new action — even as the candidates vying for his job put forward aggressive plans of their own. Instead, the president has suggested the root causes behind a “disturbed” man’s actions are difficultRead More

Nearing the end of a lengthy primary fight, Democrats are coalescing around Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and looking to reunite the party through a carefully orchestrated plan aimed at nudging rival Bernie Sanders to make his exit. President Barack Obama’s endorsement of his former secretary of state on Thursday headlined a day of unity for Democrats as the party prepares for Republican Donald Trump. Amid the message of harmony, Sanders crisscrossed the nation’s capital and received praise in meetings with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Democratic leaders. On Thursday night, Sanders’ District of Columbia rally outside RFK StadiumRead More

On the verge of endorsing Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama will pay tribute to Bernie Sanders’ historic candidacy for presidency with an Oval Office meeting aimed at unifying the Democratic Party for a general election brawl with Donald Trump. Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination, was heading Thursday to the White House under intense pressure to drop out and clear the way for Clinton. Though he showed signs he understood the end was near — he was laying off about half his team — he vowed to keep fighting for his movement, which Democratic leaders hope will evolve intoRead More

With an unflinching look back at a painful history, President Barack Obama stood on the hallowed ground of Hiroshima on Friday and declared it a fitting place to summon people everywhere to embrace the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. As the first American president to visit the city where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb, Obama came to acknowledge — but not apologize for — an act many Americans see as a justified end to a brutal war that Japan started with a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. Some 140,000 people died after a U.S. warplane targetedRead More

Barack Obama on Friday paid tribute to the 140,000 people killed by the world’s first atomic bomb attack and sought to bring global attention to his unfulfilled vision of a world without nuclear weapons, as he became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. “Death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” Obama said, after laying a wreath, closing his eyes and briefly bowing his head before an arched monument in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park that honors those killed on Aug. 6, 1945, when U.S. forces dropped the bomb that ushered in the nuclear age. The bombing,Read More